Greg King - a tribute.

The news broke on Saturday that Greg King had been found dead near his car on a deserted road in the Wellington hills. The circumstances as reported by the police were not suspicious and the case has become the subject of a Coroner's report sometime in the future. There is speculation abroad that his death may have been suicide, diabetes driven or perhaps an unfortunate combination of both. He was 42 and by all accounts destined to achieve much greater things in his life. Of course that tends to overlook that he had achieved an enormous amount in his profession - the Law.

He was not only the youngest person to ever provide a defence for an accused in a murder trial but had a number of times argued New Zealand cases before the Privy Council in England, a rare event for any lawyer once let alone a number of times. There was something disarmingly honest about Greg that was also very rare. In any age men like to promote their sporting prowess of earlier years and as fisherman get old the fish they once landed on a particular day are always getting bigger. In Greg's amateur boxing career he described bluntly himself as a 'canvas kisser.'

As an advocate for his clients, and while he took on many unpopular cases where the defendants  were literally hated, he still managed to find a rapport with the family of the victims, hard enough in any language. He was also the man prepared to engage with The Sensible Sentencing Trust, not agreeing with them necessarily, prepared however to listen to their arguments and advance his own. A single thing that has emerged about Greg from all quarters in the last few days, and from both 'sides of the fence,' was that he was a man that was prepared to listen. Someone that even if he might not agree with others respected their rights to an opinion. This same ability was that which the Auckland Crown Prosecutor spoke about publicly, that much of Greg's work was done unknown to the public in High Court and Supreme Court appeals, the analysis of Law that shapes the future and addresses the past.

All remarkable enough until we learn that Greg supported and helped sponsor his local rugby league club, and recently expressed hope of sponsoring an up and coming young boxer. So the two sides of the man working at all levels, advocating in the Highest Courts or encouraging young men even from the wrong side of the tracks into a sporting life. His cup was very full with kindness and concern for others. Today Bob Jones noted that he would have a go at Greg about some of Greg's clients and the greatest concession he might receive was that the particular person perhaps wasn't a nice person. So even in the confines and confidentiality of the home of his own friends Greg maintained discretion, one, which it seems, allowed him to see the good in others.

On the subject of friends Greg seems to have been one for all seasons. According to ex prison inmate John Barlow Greg took his unsuccessful appeal to the Privy Council free of charge. An appeal which I note from the small amount I knew about it should have won,  a case where the police scrapped round and found a scientist to give later discredited evidence that no other would. Two Lawyers also spoke out about Greg taking on their cases of having their right to practice removed for disciplinary reasons by the Law Society, one of those also done free of charge. Ironically in tributes that have followed Greg's passing have included those from the Law Society itself, Judges, Police and Prosecutors. In the modern world Lawyers seldom if ever take on cases free of charges but here was Greg doing it a number of times, those of ex Lawyers and criminals alike. In tough economic times many in the public and politicians see the Legal profession in a poor light, often as greedy - something that seems to find a universal home across society but here was Greg King: willing to work for nothing at times and also do the hard cases on the lowest pay - State funded legal aid.

So it is hard to keyhole the reputation of Greg King because of the breadth of his personality, his generosity and belief in the Law. I wrote to him near the outset of the Ewan MacDonald trial mainly because he'd looked to have been handed a case that was heavily prejudiced against the defendant, MacDonald, by some of evidence introduced from MacDonald's video statement and by an unorthodox procedure of calling back witnesses a number of times which I felt was for dramatic affect on the Jury. I simply offered support and my view that I was sure a host of people were silently supporting Greg in his work. Within a few hours I received back a warm reply in which he said he was genuinely touched. Of course as some that may have read here before realise I've trekked some fairly unusual  roads in my life yet I was able to appreciate that here was a man capable of a kind gesture even when under the pressure of conducting the defence in a hugely controversial murder trial.

More recently I discovered that Greg parents were prison officers. His father having been working in the same prison where Arthur Thomas served the last of his sentence before being pardoned and released for murders he never committed. An event that Greg was later to say formed part of his earliest memories of the Justice system. A prison in the barest bones of the middle north island fixed between streams and lakes of trout, watched over by snow capped active volcanoes. It also emerges that his father was connected to the tribe Tu wharetoa in that ancestral home land. The prison huts bleak enough in their low security setting wasn't far from an equally bleak officer's village where the young Greg and his family lived. Whether that background goes to explain the full landscape of Greg's life and where he walked without fear may now never be fully explained. Though somewhere, perhaps in the looming power of those volcanic peaks or the depths of the nearby Lake Taupo something formed in Greg, grew to span the depths and peaks of life for one remarkable young man who would touch so many.

Greg may have already left the district in pursuit of his education when his pugilistic pal Jones punched out at reporters  who had buzzed him in a helicopter as he fished for trout. No doubt a sometimes topic of conversation on the weekly visits to Jones library where Greg appears to have kept his cards close to his chest in terms of his clients but not his vision of Justice. Visits, which no doubt by Greg's admission of his propensity for alcohol, may have involved drinking wine. Wine, liquor,  booze something Greg admitted this year was too large a part of his life. On Saturday the public learnt that Greg had diabetes, more recently came the information that he'd had bad news at a Doctor's visit last Wednesday, the day before his death. It has also emerged that Greg was having trouble with his feet, hands and eyes, all symptoms I understand of the advance of diabetes that is not well managed or continuing to deteriorate.

I've learnt a little more about the effects of unmanaged diabetes, beside knowing of a near neighbour having to have  her legs amputated, and one could imagine that Greg's lifestyle and aspirations may have made cutting back on drinking difficult, also the management of blood sugars by injection if he indeed needed insulin intervention. When I think for a moment of a man at the peak of his intellectual powers, someone so frank about the limits of his earlier sporting prowess that relegated him to speak of himself in terms of being a 'canvas kisser,' with his interest in furthering the careers of league players and boxers alike - I can sense for a moment that part of Greg may have compensated his belief of physical short comings by promoting the opportunities of others. There could be further evidence of that in his choice of sports - not rugby, bowls or cricket - but the working man's blue of league and boxing, probably not a long way from the beer canteen at Hautu prison camp where his father was an officer. As for choice of friends, and they apparently appear to have been very wide and varied, he found a place for the wealthy and pugilistic Bob Jones, sometime boxer, promoter and manager, long term fan and a fearless litigant.

At 42, or even 60 or 72 diabetes would not be anybody's friend. Some of us will have known children with diabetes frustrated by what activities they couldn't undertake so I wonder where the diagnosis of this illness left Greg in the first place, let alone a year later when it appears things may have worsened. Here was a man equal to any orator with a piercing intellect to whom other lawyers looked for support when preparing complex appeals, and whose one known method of relaxation was with aspiring, current and ex sportsmen some of whom he may have enjoyed sharing a drink and experiences with men few Judges or lawyers could find company with. This too the man said to be unable to say no, whose clients he was unsuccessful in defending spoke highly of him. Someone outspoken in not supporting moves for a separate indigenous Justice system pushed for by some of his own people, and indication again of how sharply Greg understood the need for unity and not separation. Someone whom, as modest he was, understood how great his destiny may have been, unforgiving of himself for what he may mistakenly feared he might have been unable to achieve. Of course as a legal strategist few might have equalled or have mastered Greg, but in what at times for him may have been a somewhat lonely pursuit of his unique vision, and his batting away of controversy and praise I suggest he, who helped some many others in their lives, may have  felt betrayed by life itself.

I read somewhere the throw away use of the word manic he injected into a interview of either describing himself or the fact that some in Law retreat into drink for relief from pressure, and am reminded that sometimes in jest is the truth. Greg's life measured by any degree was peaks and troughs, as high as the volcanic peaks of his youth and the depth of the lake of his people. Though outgoing and friendly by nature his closing addresses to Juries were sometimes considered as almost theatrical and entrancing, perhaps giving a glimpse of the actor within the man and the possibility that he may not have always engaged with others as himself, but rather as someone he chose as the representation of himself. It is not a simple man that so easily undoes or grasps complexities without personal cost, cost which might be hidden or disguised to self-protect.

Of course I'm simply speculating and not out to achieve anything more than attempt to engage with what made Greg so special and what may have also made him perhaps equally fragile whether it was noticed earlier or not. I accept that I have little chance of answering my own questions about this man, but no doubt he will stand in memory as the giant he may never have realised or allowed himself to accept. What more to do but to salute him for a selfless life's work, fierce, subdued or simply persuasive and logical when necessary. Dare I say that one of the greatest Kauri's has fallen and bewilderment echoes in a long silence of footfalls lost.